If the artist copies the mere nature, the natura naturata, what idle

rivalry! If he proceeds only from a given form, which is supposed to

answer to the notion of beauty, what an emptiness, what an unreality

there always is in his productions, as in Cipriani's pictures! Believe me,

you must master the essence, the natura naturans, which presupposes a

bond between nature in the higher sense and the soul of man.

The wisdom in nature is distinguished from that in man by the co-

instantaneity of the plan and the execution; the thought and the product

are one, or are given at once; but there is no reflex act, and hence there

is no moral responsibility. In man there is reflection, freedom, and

choice; he is, therefore, the head of the visible creation. In the objects

of nature are presented, as in a mirror, all the possible elements, steps,

and processes of intellect antecedent to consciousness, and therefore to

the full development of the intelligential act; and man's mind is the very

focus of all the rays of intellect which are scattered throughout the

images of nature. Now, so to place these images, totalized and fitted to

the limits of the human mind, as to elicit from, and to superinduce

upon, the forms themselves the moral reflections to which they

approximate, to make the external internal, the internal external, to

make nature thought, and thought nature - this is the mystery of genius

in the fine arts. Dare I add that the genius must act on the feeling, that

body is but a striving to become mind-that it is mind in its essence?

In every work of art there is a reconcilement of the external with the

internal; the conscious is so impressed on the unconscious as to appear

in it; as compared mere letters inscribed on a tomb with figures

themselves constituting the tomb. He who combines the two is the man

of genius; and for that reason he must partake of both. Hence there is in

genius itself an unconscious activity; nay, that is the genius in the man

of genius. And this is the true exposition of the rule that the artist must

first eloign himself from nature in order to return to her with full effect.

Why this? Because if he were to begin by mere painful copying, he

would produce masks only, not forms breathing life. He must out of his